Reloading WWII 30-06

O

Ozzieman

New member
Reloading WWII 30-06
Several years ago I purchased several thousand rounds of Surplus 30-06. There were several different manufactures but most were LC (Lake City) with the date stamp of 42 and 44.
There were several hundred with the date of 54.
I purchased these planing on using the components for reloading since most have corrosive primers.
The attached photos are of the components, cases, bullets and primers.
I was wondering if anyone else has done this with a large number of rounds.
The reason I am writing this is because of my surprise at the lack of consistency of the components. I realize that this was early in the war but as a test when I was unloading them with a kinetic bullet puller I weighted the powers.
I measured 50 and got an average of 47 GR but what surprised me was the min max. There was a difference of > 5 GR.
Today I started loading them with 4895 with a service load for my Grand and 03-A3. Since I didn’t really know what the bullets weights were I measured each one. I was under the impression that the 150 was standard for M1 Grand loads and since all of these came in the cloth pouches with end blocks.
Again when I measured these I was surprised at the lack of consistency of the bullets. Of the 200 I just completed loading this morning the weight averaged close to 150 but again I had a spread of over 5 GR. The scale I am using is a very high end balance scale that I also calibrate with a set of weights so the difference is in the components not the scale.
Nothing was done to these bullets. No cleaning or polishing, they are in that good condition.
The bras on the other hand were some of the nicest brass I have ever worked. I did neck size to get the old primers out and the diameter back down and none required length sizing.
Just wondering if anyone else has used surplus ammo for components and seen the same.
 
About 40 years ago i came into a pickup load of WWII .30-06 ammo. Am still firing that ammo and still reloading the cases. Corrosive primers are not a big deal: After firing clean the bore with hot soapy water or the old Army bore cleaner.
 
I also would have shot them as is, then reloaded them with new components. A good cleaning after shooting would have sufficed.

The 5 grain difference could very well have been from different powder lots used in loading at different times. The reason why surplus powder vendors always advise to start low and work up your load. Do not assume burn rates on all powder lots are identical, could be disastrous. 5 grains is a pretty wide difference, but likely all lots were proof tested before they were sent to the field.
 
Clifford . Hughes

Dear Ozzieman:

Your rifle bore isn't the only thing that should concern you when shooting mercuric primers. When a murcuric primer fires it coats the inside of the case with mercury that can't be removed. The mercury amalgamates with the brass and weakens it. Your saved powder can be used if you use the original load and bullet weight. The bullets make into good plinking ammo. The best thing is to shoot the ammo as issued and scrap the brass.

Semper Fi.

Gunnery Sergeant
Clifford L. Hughes
USMC Retired.
 
Your rifle bore isn't the only thing that should concern you when shooting mercuric primers. When a murcuric primer fires it coats the inside of the case with mercury that can't be removed. The mercury amalgamates with the brass and weakens it.
Click to expand...

US WWII era .30 caliber rifle ammo used chlorate primers. The chlorate
is the culprit in those corrosive primers. When the round is fired it leaves a residue is similar to table salt.


The U.S. military completely suspended the use of mercuric primers around 1898, so the likelihood of running into mercuric primers in anything other than extremely old, or some foreign ammunition is remote.
Click to expand...

http://www.surplusrifle.com/reviews/primers/pdf/primers.pdf
 
OK, thank you all for the corrosive lesion but since I want to load for the guns I shoot, with the loads I like and have been shooting for the past 30 years the reason I am pulling them apart is because I have less than 2 cents per round invested in them..
The powder out of the cases is now in my wifes garden and when it was pulled it had a very strong chemical smell. This usually indicates its gone unstable.
The old primers since they are corrosive will be deposed of in the correct manner.
The reason for my post is not to discuss if any one shoots ww2 ammo or should I.
The reason for my post was to ask if anyone reloaded using the component and found the bullet weights to be so poor for average bullet weight. A min max of over 5 GR seems to be a bit much from the same ammo company using the same bullet in the same year.

I have an M1 Grand and an 03-A3 and both have rated barrels of excellent so shooting corrosive primers is not something I will do and second I am too lazy to have to clean them that much.
I do enough of that shooting black powder.:o
 
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Twenty or thirty years ago I purchase several thousand WWII rounds. Some of the cases were corroded through and I never shot those. Groups with the once fired brass were awful, so I weight sorted the stuff. There was at least a 35 grain difference between the heaviest cases and the lightest cases. I had lots of cases with off center primer holes.

Obviously what was most important in a shooting war was getting shooting ammunition out to the front.

Based on what I now know of old gunpowder, the best thing to do with ammunition this old is to pull the bullets and dump the powder. There is a lot of denial about powder aging, but it does. Smokeless powder is a high energy molecule that wants to become a low energy molecule. There are stabliziers in the powder, but once they are consumed, the stuff is a fire hazard, and due to uneven burn rates, can cause pressure issues.

Due to the migration of nitroglycerin within double based powders, the surface of the grain will become rich in nitroglycerin even though the total energy content of the propellant has decreased. This will cause changes in the burn rate, and can cause pressures to spike. The surface of single based nitrocellulose powders also change as the powder deteriorates, and it changes unevenly. This creates conditions for erratic burn rates. Burn rate instability is undesirable and can cause explosive conditions in firearms. It is an extremely rare occurrence, but old ammunition has caused rifle Kabooms.


Garand Blowup with old US ammunition.

http://www.socnet.com/showthread.php?p=1344088

There was a thread on another forum titeled “What’s in your ammo can” and many guys had old surpluss ammo so I told this story. Ty (arizonaguide) asked that I come put it here also so here it is boys, draw your own conclutions.

Back in the mid 80s my Dad and a bunch of us went shooting in Arizona. Dad had a couple thousand rounds of WWII surplus .30M1 (30-06) ammo that looked great on the outside cut his M1 in half in his hands. He was kneeling with elbow on knee when the first round of this ammo went BOOM! We were all pelted with sand and M1 shrapnel.

When the dust cleared Dad was rolling around on his back with buttstock in one hand, for stock in the other, barrel and receiver hanging by the sling around his arm trying to yell “mortar” thinking he was back on Okinawa in battle. The blast had removed his ear muffs, hat, glasses, and broke the headlight in my truck 15 feet away but Dad was only shook up and scratched a bit once he got his wits back. It sheared off the bolt lugs, blew open the receiver front ring, pushed all the guts out the bottom of the magazine, and turned the middle of the stock to splinters.

After a couple hours of picking up M1 shrapnel we headed to the loading bench and started pulling bullets. Some of the powder was fine, some was stuck together in clumps, and some had to be dug out with a stick. It didn’t smell and was not dusty like powder usuley is when it’s gone bad. Put it in a pie tin and light it and it seemed a tad fast but not so you would think it could do that, wasent like lighting a pistol powder even. He had 2000 rounds of this stuff and nun of us were in any mood to play with it much after what we watched so it all went onto a very entertaining desert bon fire. I got the M1 splinters when Dad died last year and will post pix here below for your parousal and entertainment.

Anyway, I no longer play with any ammo I am not 100% sure has always been stored properly . . . cheap shooting ain’t worth the risk to me anymore! I still buy surpluss if the price in right but I unload and reload it with powder I am sure of or just use the brass.

She was a good shooting servasable Winchester M1 before this.
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GarandBlownUpwithWWIIUS1.jpg


GarandBlownUpwithWWIIUS2.jpg


GarandBlownUpwithWWIIUS2b.jpg


GarandBlownUpwithWWIIUS2c.jpg


GarandBlownUpwithWWIIUS4.jpg


GarandBlownUpwithWWIIUS4a.jpg
 
Don't remember the date but the military dropped mercuric primers well before 1942. Don't think the military used double base powders for small arms in WWII.

I'm still using surplus GI cases with '42, '43 and '44 dates but I had no problems in my 1903-A3 in 63-'65. Of course the powder was much younger then - so was I. Given the age of the ammo, I suspect I'd also pull the bullets, dump the powder and reload 'em with new 4895.

Given the crimped primers, you're likely to have some caps popping when you remove them but they aren't dynamite, just wear safety goggles and don't let piles of live ones accumulate in the primer catcher.
 
I purchased almost 20,000 30-06 cases many years ago that someone had pulled the bullets from and salvaged the powder. All I got was unfired primed brass.

Well these sat in my basement almost 20 years before I decided to load them up. In the interest of safety I decided to remove the primers and reprime the brass. I had no problems removing the old primers, and had only one detonate in the depriming process. I reloaded with new components as you have done and I still have quite a bit of this ammo left.

As far as the variance in the weight of powder, keep in mind the military uses bulk grade powder not cannister as we buy commercially. They make up a large lot of powder and test it for burning rate, then vary the charge to yield the desired velocity and accuracy they want. Thus, every lot of military ammo may have a slightly different charge of powder. It doesn't matter to them, just the result.

This is one reason so much work is required when reloading with pulldown surplus powder, The powder that comes from 30-06 ammo or 7.62 NATO ammo is all bulk grade, and the reloader needs to work up a charge for every different lot of powder. Once that is done, it yields as good a degree of accuracy as any cannister grade powder available.

As far as accuracy, keep in mind most military ammo is not match grade and the mean accuracy is generally 2-3 MOA at 100 yards if I remember. We used to call it "minute of torso". It's good enough for their needs.
 
I would have suggested finding somebody with a full automatic and trading but since you've already pulled the bullets, it doesn't matter. The brass is great for reloading. I'd use the bullets for plinking. If you've never tried reduced loads, these bullets would be ideal. If you load 19.0 grs SR4759 under those bullets, accuracy is fabulous and recoil.....well, there isn't any. A child can shoot those and the load will hunt if necessary to 150 yds. They'll run great from the 03 but they won't work the action of the Garand. Set the sights of the 03 at 300 yds and it'll be pretty close at 100yds.FWIW, when they were making the original ammo, the powder load was determined by the velocity that was produced by that particular lot of power, not by weight. The velocity spec was the target.
 
Ozzieman,

I admit I'm a little surprised at the weight range, as +/- 1.5 grains was the tolerance on the 173 grain HPBT. But maybe that's just for the match version. IIRC, M2 ball is training ammo (M2 AP, with 168 grain AP bullet became standard combat issue). A 152 grain FMJ bullet is what Hatcher lists for M2. He says it was developed originally at the request of the National Guard to replace M1 ball because trainees were complaining of the recoil in the '03 rifles the Guard had to train with (and the Army, too, for a long time), and the high BC 173 grain BT also carried too far for many National Guard ranges. IIRC, the extreme range was around 5500 yards for the 173 BT, vs. around 3500 yards for the 152 grain FB. In any event, the ammo factories mixed the bullets that came off different sets of tooling.

Take a look at some more modern M2 ball bullet bases, below. These five weighed 150.4 to 151.8 They came out of one can and were the first 5 I pulled randomly out of my bin of pulled M2 bullets. You can see by the bases that different tools formed them or different weight lead slugs went into them. It's why M2 seldom groups better than about 3" at 100 yards. You can get a match rifle to group it 2.5", but that's about it.

vcmskfrepr640x480iv.jpg


As to powder, pull and replace is good advice. The military cuts off storage after 20 years, then surpluses it out. I've got powders older than that which are still fine, but I know they've stayed cool in the basement the whole time. Alliant has some century old Unique that's still good, owing to careful storage conditions, but the surplus stuff may or may not have been subjected to heat. I just wouldn't be sanguine about the condition of surplus ammo almost 70 years old. Half that, yes. I still shoot stuff from the 70's sometimes.
 
Thanks Unclenick.
One question I have about your bullets. Were these from different manufactures and dates? The reason I ask is that all of the 200 I have pulled so far looked exactly like the one in my photos which match your center bullet base.
Thanks Slamfire.
You brought up a point that I noticed. I had heard about powder going to dust and or clumping. All of the cases look pristine and had no corrosion on the outside. But along with your point I was surprised at the lack of visible deterioration in the powder. It looked exactly like 4895 that I pulled out of a can with no clumps or dust.
I also took an equal teaspoon full and setting it on a can put a match to each. I noticed that both burnt about the same but the old powder burnt with a much yellower flame and smoked a lot more.
When I pull the next 200 I will do the same with that powder. But no matter what,,, it will become garden fertilizer.
Again thanks every one.
 
Ozzieman,

You may have got lucky. Mine are all LC 72, though I may be a worst case example because it looks like it was all pulled from machinegun links which gave it a second opportunity to mix. Still, you get some idea that quality control, even in the same plant, machine to machine, was not terrifically consistent. That makes guessing at performance pretty tough.

I've read a little more since the OP, and it's said in several places that one reason they wound up issuing the M2 AP for combat during the war was that the 168 grain AP bullets just plain shot better, especially for snipers. The M2, in accuracy tests at 200 yards, apparently never held better than 5" from special heavy machine rest gun barrels, except for one lot made in Denver that had a good reputation. They could have done something about that, but I guess it wasn't a priority at the time. Volume was.
 
Ozzieman, around here there is no shortage of something to shoot, along with that there are no short cuts, ammo was involved in an inherited rifle, I was told the ammo was the best part of the deal so I asked them to go shoot it up and give me the cases and there was no 'lets go'.

I shook ever round to determine if I could feel powder moving from one of the case to the other, some cases had no movement, others had a small amount of felt movement and that can result in enough reasons to render your rifle scrap and ruin the shooters day in more ways than one.

Powder caked in the rear of the case can ignite and burn slowly, the only sound heard is the fall of the firing pin. When the bolt is opened and the caked powder burns through the cake to the loose powder in front the rear of the case can come APART.

THEN THERE IS THE POWDER CAKE IN THE FRONT OF THE CASE, WHEN FIRED THE EXPANDING GASES CAN NOT MOVE THE OBSTRUCTION (CAKED POWDER). Powder caked in front will result in a case coming apart with no place to go.

And of course there can be compressed loads with out powder movement, it is not the risk.

F. Guffey
 
This guy found glumpy powder inside his SL 43 ammunition. If the stuff looked nice and bright on the outside I really doubt he would have pulled his bullets.

What was inside showed the ammunition had gone bad.

45 years is the shelf life standard used by the Army to scrap single based powders. Stuff may still be good, but ammo from the 40's and 50's is getting very long in the tooth.

http://www.jouster.com/forums/showt...ng-down-old-corroded-ammo&p=137149#post137149

Tearing down old, corroded ammo

Tore down a bunch of poorly-stored .30-06 ammo yesterday. Most of it "SL 43" military ball, corroded and still in en blocs. The underside of the pulled bullets was green and some of the stick powder was stuck together inside shell. One group of shells threw me though. "DEN 42" it said on the bottom and the primer was red. When I decapped this one I poked a hole through the primer, versus pushing the primer out of its pocket. Actually got stuck in the shell holder and was a pain to remove. Needless to say, I didn't bother trying to remove the rest of those particular primers.
Click to expand...
 
Unclenick, I've heard rumors about how LC .30-06 from the Vietnam era is very poor quality ammo, and I'm thinking your photo illustrates the reason.

I have most of a box of 1000 pulled M2 bullets from gibrass.com and they all look pretty uniform. Weights of all the samples I put on my scale were all within 1 gr. difference.
 
The only m2 ap rounds loaded for the m1 that i have heard of are around 162 grains. but yes they are very inconsistent with some being near 160 and other near 165. I have reloaded pulled bullets before and used 57.0gr of h414 powder. If you crimp these, they are more powerful than the original m2 ap bullets loaded for the m1 garand and will go clean through 1" of mildish steel whereas the original m2 ap would get stuck in the steel and barely be poking out the other side. these are very high pressure rounds and not meant for the m1
 
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